"Australia's controversial plan to implement a mandatory ISP filtering system may crash into a big brick wall after a backer effectively changed teams. Senator Nick Xenophon was previously in favor of a system that would run all citizens' Internet connections through a filter for "illegal" content because it might have also blocked access to online gambling sites. As more and more concerns about the workability of the ambitious plan have been raised, however, he has decided that there are too many unanswered questions and now says he will move to block any legislation that comes through...

"[T]he more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this," Xenophon told the newspaper. "I'm very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this. I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent."

In addition to Xenophon's decision to stop supporting the filtering legislation, an independent poll of Australian citizens conducted by Galaxy showed that only five percent of Australians actually want ISPs to be responsible for controlling access to content, and only four percent want the government to hold the reins to such a system. A different survey by Netspace found that only 6.3 percent of those surveyed agreed with the proposed policies."